first met Pádraig Ó Tuama in 2012 when he was visiting Australia from his home
in Belfast. He was speaking at a gathering called “Sacred Edge, Spirituality
in Diversity” in the Victorian seaside town of Queenscliff. Pádraig is a poet,
a storyteller, a theologian and a peace worker—the perfect speaker for this
gig. He spoke about the sea and the chaos in the stories of the beginning of the
beginning. The lilt of his accent and the poetry of his language were enough
to make me swoon, but at the same time I was riveted by his scholarship and
capacity to invoke big themes. I still have the screeds of notes I took that day.
A friend introduced us after his talk. I had been an oral storyteller for years but
I was so swept away by this person who spoke astonishing artful words that I
was quite beyond myself. I remember telling Pádraig a story I would never tell
someone I’d just met. That’ll either be the beginning or the end, I thought.
Since that day, Pádraig and his partner Paul have become beloved house guests
when they come to Melbourne. They have introduced us to marvellous recipes and
enhanced our taste for whiskey. No one could want for more depth, hilarity, astute
observation and thoughtful listening around the table. Whenever they are over
we invite the neighbours in and have a house concert with stories and poetry.
Pádraig and I share a history of churched childhoods. His, Irish Catholic; mine,
Australian Protestant. He grew up in Cork, one of six siblings and lived with
the silent shame of same gender attraction, alongside a passionate interest
in writing and religion. In conservative Christian groups during his teens and
early twenties there was no safe place to belong to himself without risking a
complete dismantling. He endured several exorcisms and two conversion therapy
“counsellors.” Eventually, he sought out skilled psychotherapy that enabled him
to come out without losing his capacity to articulate his relationship to the faith
traditions he had been immersed in. As a theologian, he has an instinctive eye for
powers at play, for the marginalised and silenced witnesses in the ancient texts.
Having been on the edge for so long, he is fearless about sitting with people who
have been shamed, ignored and rebuked, and helping them claim a voice.
Corrymeela in Ballycastle is Northern Ireland’s oldest peace and reconciliation
organisation, a place for conversation about difficult conflicting truths. Pádraig
has had a long association there, first as an artist-in-residence and for the last
four years as the Director. For many years, Pádraig tells me, it was thought
that the word Corrymeela meant “hill of harmony,” but more recently the
community learned it means something closer to “place of lumpy crossings.”
I love how Pádraig can weave his way through the language and beauty offered by
a religious faith and at the same time name the creeping compromises and lost
clarities that arise through fear. I’ve felt invited to take hold of my strange history as
the child of a Baptist minister and to dance with the stories I have dwelt in. I love the
lament and laughter in his poetry. Every time I read, “The task is ended./Go in pieces,”
it makes me smile. How often we yearn for peace but are in pieces. Pádraig is able to
put language on experiences in a way that literally helps you stand up into your own.
I
